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BRASÍLIA – With an environmental council controlled mainly by ministries and members of the federal government, the Minister of the Environment, Ricardo Salles, approved on Monday 28 the extinction of two resolutions that delimit the permanent protection areas (APP) of mangroves and resting on the Brazilian coast. The repeal of these rules opens space for real estate speculation in the vegetation bands of the beaches and the occupation of mangrove areas for shrimp production.
The National Environment Council (Conama), chaired by Salles, also revoked a resolution that required environmental licensing for irrigation projects, in addition to approving a new rule, to allow packaging materials and pesticide residues to be burned in ovens. to be transformed into cement, replacing the standards that determined the proper environmental disposal of this material.
In the morning, environmentalists, parliamentarians and the Brazilian Association of Members of the Public Ministry of the Environment (Abrampa) asked that all items be removed from the agenda of the meeting of Conama, an institution that has a consultative and deliberative nature on environmental issues. There was also an attempt to cancel the meeting, through a lawsuit. All attempts have failed.
The repeal of resolutions 302 and 303, both of 2002, eliminates the instruments for the protection of mangroves and sandbanks, the bands with vegetation that are commonly found on dune areas, on Northeast beaches. The government’s argument is that these resolutions were covered by laws that came later, such as the Forest Code. Environmental experts point out, however, that to this day these resolutions are applied, because they are the only legal instruments that effectively protect these areas. Last month, for example, in São Paulo, the São Paulo State Environmental Company (Cetesb) lost a lawsuit and was forced, as a judgment, to respect the limits established in the 2002 resolution, “to avoid occurrence of irreparable damage to the community and the environment ”. The extinction of resolution 302 also ends with norms that defined limits for permanent preservation areas of artificial reservoirs, as well as the regime of use around these lakes.
The repeal of Resolution 284, of 2001, puts an end to the criteria of federal regulations for the granting of environmental licenses for irrigation projects. In the opinion of environmentalists, the purpose of the revocation is to end legal requirements at the request of agribusiness. The Confederation of Agriculture and Livestock of Brazil (CNA), which is a member of Conama, argued, however, that the resolution conflicts with others that are already in force. The Ministry of Agriculture declared that irrigation is not an “activity”, but an accessory of agriculture. “We do not see a positive impact of this resolution on the environment,” said the ministry, which is a member of the council.
Concentration
During the vote, Ricardo Salles even suggested that the votes be postponed to another meeting, due to the doubts that some members raised against the revocations. However, all members of the government and business institutions voted in favor of maintaining the agenda and its deliberations.
The result exposes the way in which the government came to control a body that, due to its mission and history, has always had a technical and independent composition. Since July of last year, Conama, which defines environmental norms and regulations, has been dehydrated in relation to its previous structure, as determined by Salles.
The minister concentrated the majority of the votes in the hands of the federal government and representatives of the productive sector. States and civil entities have lost representation. Conama reduced its members from 96 to 23 representatives. Carlos Bocuhy, president of the Brazilian Institute of Environmental Protection (Proam), says that due to the current structure, the federal government now has 43% of the voting power within the council composition, in addition to another 8% of the power of vote in the sector. deal. The remaining votes are diluted among members of states, municipalities and civil society. If before they had 60% voting power, now they have 49% in the new composition.
The previous structure of the body was intended to give representation to various segments of society. A part of the members of the society was chosen by nomination and another by election. However, since last year, this choice has been made by lottery.
Institutions representing civil society, including environmental associations, rural workers and indigenous peoples, saw their positions drop from 23 to 4 positions. Two of these chairs are vacant because their members, from the Associação Rare do Brasil and the Ilha Ativa Commission, left the council and were not replaced. Therefore, the voting was carried out without counting the vote of two other members.
The states have also lost representation. If before there was a chair for each of the 26 states and the Federal District, now there are 5 chairs represented by a state in each geographic region of the country. The municipalities, which had 8 representatives, now have 2. The Federal Public Ministry is a member of the board and regularly critical of environmental flexibility, but it is the only one without the right to vote in deliberations.
“With the conformation of the conama installed by the Bolsonaro government, the government obtained total control to pass the cattle, reduce the rigor of environmental legislation through municipal resolutions. Conama, a body with four decades of important contributions to environmental policy, in practice is dead, ”said former Ibama president Suely Araújo, senior specialist in public policy at the Climate Observatory. “Regardless of the government in power, the council has always been a space for technical debates, with wide dissemination of the issues under discussion. It was a great sadness to attend the 135th meeting today. The end result can be summed up in one word: reverse. ”
Judicialization
The regional prosecutor of the republic, Fátima Aparecida de Souza Borghi, representative of the Federal Public Ministry, clarified to the members of Conama that the revocations will be questioned by the MPF in court.
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